I am looking for an algorithms reference that explains the concepts in a clear, and consice manner. I have the book "fundamentals of algorithmics" but i find it takes forever to get to the point, and it is not always clear. Any help would be appreciated guys, thanks alot.

>I am looking for an algorithms reference that explains the concepts in a clear, and consice manner.
Typically, you won't find one. If you think the concepts are explained in a clear and concise manner then you already understand them, and you've probably implemented them multiple ways as well. ;) If you really want to learn this stuff, get ready to buy several books and spend a lot of time net diving for little gems of wisdom. As for books, I recommend The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth as a general reference. It's old, but I have yet to see any books that compare. I also recommend with hesitation, Algorithms in C by Robert Sedgewick. The explanations are good, and the code is a start, but the code is also the most awful broken crap I've seen in my life. You have to look around a bit, but Practical Algorithms in C++ and Practical Data Structures in C++ by Bryan Flamig are good as well. Data Structures Using C by Tenenbaum, Langsam, and Augstein is another hard find, but I'm fond of it.

>BY FAR the best book in my opinion is Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen.
CLR is excellent as far as it goes. But I found it surprisingly incomplete in its coverage for how popular it is.